Did we lose those labor jobs to automation? I don’t think so. We lost those jobs because they were outsourced to India and China.
I have been to China several times and it’s a massive labor force. Apple’s products have created far more jobs than it replaced but they created those jobs in China, not America. If target and Walmart go away it will hurt China manufacturing jobs far more than it will hurt us jobs.
I agree that automation does not create jobs but technology absolutely creates jobs. 50 years ago there were no computer jobs or jobs that used computers. Now there are millions of computer jobs and millions more jobs that use computers. The iPhone and android may have replaced the few day planner notebook jobs but it has created millions more.
I’m not sure how we categorize moving from a world where goods are distributed physical to electronically. But that’s why we lost those jobs. It’s got nothing to do with China and everything to do with the fact that million selling “record” now only ships maybe 200,000 actual physical copies the rest are now bought as 1s and 0s from server farms which requires drastically less labor. We lost those jobs they are quite simply no longer necessary to supply the demand.
The iPhone and Android themselves probably didn’t kill any jobs. But the concept of buying all your software as a download (first for the phone, and now for desktops) has definitely killed jobs. Both at the retail stores and at the manufacturing level distribution, nobody needs to print thousands and discs and put them in boxes and in trucks because the vast majority of software sales are now 1s and 0s.
And when we go to a 3D printed world the same thing will happen with more and more sectors of retail. Like I said, when you can print the entire contents of Target a lot of jobs will simply evaporate. Ask Barnes and Noble, but hurry because the downloadable economy is killing them. Clothing will be the fatal app. Vast quantities of retail space is taken up with clothes. The day clothes are 1s and 0s will kill at least half the retail sector.